Background information
for
A Tale of Two Cities
(1859) by Charles Dickens
Pinneo, 2012
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Dickens came from a lower-middle class family, where
he enjoyed a relatively enjoyable boyhood
• When Dickens was 12, his father and then the rest of
his family was thrown in debtors prison, so without
them Dickens was forced to work in a shoe polish
factory, a run down building full of rats, which Dickens
compared to a living grave
• Dickens’ experiences with poverty and hardship
early in life account for his sympathy with the poor
and working classes in most of his novels
• Dickens didn’t receive a formal education until he
found a job as a law clerk at the age of 15, and his
success came when he began publishing “serials,” or
small portions of narratives as continuing series
• By 1859, when ToTC was first published, Dickens
was the most popular British author of the time
•
1840s and 1850s London
• For the upper-middle and ruling class,
“progress” meant an increase in tangible
material and wealth – this meant more factories,
more workers, more residents, larger, more
organized cities for the new workers and
residents, and of course new and nicer things for
the upper-middle and ruling classes
• One factor propelling this “progress” was the
Industrial Revolution of the late 1700s and early
1800s
• But because progress had advanced so rapidly,
London and other cities built too many factories
and produced too many goods like textiles, and
due to similar systems in America and other major
European cities, the 1840s was a period in which over
1.5 million British were unemployed
1840s and 1850s London
• Due to unemployment and hard financial
times for the nation as well as an influx of
impoverished Irish potato farmers, high food
prices, homelessness, overcrowded cities,
horrible working conditions in factories,
and pollution of the cities and adjoining
rivers became serious problems  many
people were frustrated with the wealthy
ruling class
• Just a few years before the publishing of
ToTC, Britain faced another national setback
with embarrassing losses during the Crimean
War in eastern Europe
1840s and 1850s London
• Violence broke out at massive political protests
against the government and Queen Victoria in the late
1840s/early 1850s in response to the government’s lack of
assistance during these troubled times
• Citizens were also protesting the fact that most working
men and women couldn’t vote for members of
Parliament
• The government, in fact, prepared the army during
this period fearing a larger, widespread movement
• “While it was the best of times for England’s
wealthy, with their town homes and country estates,
Dickens believed that times had never been worse for
the nation’s poor. Hunger, disease, poverty, and
ignorance characterized the daily fabric of their lives.
Dickens had little hope that a social upheaval, like the
one that shook France just half a century earlier,
could be avoided.”
– McGraw-Hill study guide
Dickens’ feelings about 1840s/50s London
• Dickens wrote to a famous English parliamentarian at the time to
express his personal view that the mood and feelings of the public
was "like the general mind of France before the breaking out
of the first Revolution”
• Dickens attended a public execution in London and recorded his
observations and feelings: "I believe a sight so inconceivably
awful as the wickedness and levity of the immune crowd
collected at that execution this morning could be imagined by
no man... thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians and vagabonds of
every kind, flocked to the ground, with every variety of fool
and offensive behaviour. Fightings, faintings, whistlings,
imitations of punch, brutal jokes, tumultuous demonstrations
of indecent delight when swooning women were dragged out
of the crowd by the police with their dresses disordered, gave
a new zest to the general excitement. When the sun rose
brightly - as it did - it gilded thousands upon thousands of
upturned faces, so inexpressibly odious in their brutal mirth or
callousness, that a man had cause to feel ashamed of the
shape he wore, and to shrink from himself, as fashioned in the
image of the Devil."
Setting
• ToTC takes place in both Paris and London over the
course of about 18 years beginning in 1775 and ending
in 1793
• This time frame is intentional, as the novel covers the
years before and during the French Revolution
So… what’s the connection between 1850s London
and the French Revolution?
• During the 1770s and 1780s in both France and
England, there were strong feelings by many citizens
(especially among the lower classes) that their
respective governments were corrupt and oppressive
• The actions and ideals of the American Revolution in
the late 1770s gave rise to political organizations in
both nations where these ideas were debated and
strict divisions in the fabric of the countries were
outlined
• In response, both nations’ governments suspended
many rights and freedoms of speech and assembly
The French Revolution
• All social classes in France were resentful and angry
with the absolute power exercised by the monarchy
• The king imposed unfair taxes on the lower class to
cover debts incurred by the king’s wars,
unemployment was high, food prices were high, and
the king favored nobility while largely ignoring the
needs of the general populace
• King Louis XVI and his wife Queen Marie Antoinette
were symbols of wealth, luxury, and over-consumption
• The lower, middle, and upper class were part of one
large political party of “commoners,” while the landed
nobility were a separate political group, and finally the
clergy were part of their own political group
• When the three parties met in the late 1780s, the
“commoners” demanded their rights and freedoms be
included in a new Constitution, and in 1789 when it
appeared the king was interfering, riots erupted
The French Revolution
• The mobs gained control of parts of the French army
and in order to gain arms and as a symbolic move
against the government, they stormed the Bastille, a
prison and armory
• Several months later the mobs stormed the royal palace
at Versailles, forced the king and queen into hiding in
Paris, where they were eventually caught, imprisoned,
and later publicly executed
• By the early 1790s, much of the “organization” of the
Revolution had splintered and disintegrated, and radicals
took control of the movement and terrorism and mob
mentality took over and obscured many of the original
grand, lofty visions for a new, more democratic
government  “Reign of Terror,” guillotine
• Eventually, Napoleon Bonaparte takes control of the
country as “emperor” and lead France into more
European wars in the early 1800s
Sources:
• “Introduction” of A Tale of Two Cities by Gillen D’Arcy
Wood, from 2004 Barnes and Noble Classics edition
• Elements of Literature 6th ed., Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston. 2003.
• “Study Guide” for A Tale of Two Cities, from The
McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.